Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Mamie and the Chicken

I have some memories of my great-grandmother Mary Elizabeth Campbell Kirkpatrick (1875-1966). She died when I was three, shortly before my family moved to Albuquerque.

The photo at left was taken before I was born, but it is much the way I remember her. Everyone in the immediate family called her Mamie. She conducted the church choir most of her adult life, and my mom said that Mamie had a voice that could have made her an opera star.

You will certainly learn more about her in future blogs, but today I will share one of the funnier Mamie stories.

Mary E. Campbell Kirkpatrick - early 1910s

Back in the earliest days of the 20th
century, when my grandmother, Edna Claire Kirkpatrick (1897-1973), was a little girl, she witnessed the events
that led to this blog post, the events that led to this favorite family story
of the infamous day when my great-grandmother tried to choke her
chicken.

I had best explain. Mamie and her husband, Louis Dillard
Kirkpatrick (1873-1951), lived with
their daughter in Bridgeport, Texas. They owned a
large house on fourteen acres of land. They had pecans, various fruit
trees, and they kept chickens. If the dinner-time meal was to be
chicken, Mamie would ask Louis to please go get her a chicken, and he'd
go out to the yard and select a tasty looking bird. He would hold
it by the head and, with a quick spin of his wrist, the chicken's head
would come off, and he'd take the chicken to my great grandmother for
cleaning and cooking.

Louis Dillard Kirkpatrick and the chickens in Bridgeport, Texas.

But one day she forgot to ask Louis to
get her a chicken. She had witnessed the deed on many, many occasions.
And she thus thought, "Oh foot! I can kill a chicken! I've seen Louis do
it a hundred times!" So she went out into the yard, snuck up on the
feathered dinner-on-legs, and grabbed it by the head. It squawked and
flapped its wings, and she took a deep breath and started to spin the
chicken around. And she continued to spin the chicken.

The
chicken was not amused. It still squawked and flapped its wings. But
Mamie kept on spinning the chicken. Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, around
the chicken went! All the other chickens looked on in wonder! Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, around the chicken went!

Eventually,
my great-grandmother let the chicken go. With a sigh, she went into the
house to find something else to make for dinner.

According to
family legend, that chicken eventually died of old age - with its head
permanently wrenched, turned backwards looking over its shoulder. When
my great-grandmother would see the chicken out in the yard she would
look at it with remorse and sigh . . . "Oh, Louis, oh . . . oh . . ."